So Wild a Heart by Candace Camp Page B

with a rush of shame where they were and what she was doing. She had planned to show up the arrogant earl, and instead he had seduced her as easily as the lowest tavern wench, making her hot and panting with desire for him, eager to feel his touch, his kiss...and so much more that it made her blush just to think of it.
    "No!" She pulled away from him, and, startled, he let her go. He stood watching her, his arms shockingly empty, fire coursing, unfulfilled, through his veins.
    Miranda smoothed down her dress and reached up to push a strand of disheveled hair back into place. "Really, Lord Ravenscar," she said, forcing all the cool calm she could muster into her voice. She must not let him see how easily he could shake her; it would be too humiliating. "This is scarcely the time or place. Anyone could come upon us at any moment"
    "They won't." His voice was low and, it startled him to find, almost shaking with the intensity of his desire. "We can go farther back. I know a place—" Devin stopped abruptly, realizing with horror that he was almost begging.
    A saving anger pierced Miranda at the thought that he knew the best place to seduce a woman in his sister's garden. "Yes," she said icily, "I am sure that you have had ample experience there. However, I do not intend to be one of your doxies."
    She turned to face him, her gray eyes shining silver with anger. "There really is no need for this charade, my lord. We both know what you want of me, and it is silly to pretend to a passion that neither one of us feels." Her smile was chilly. "You will not seduce me into marriage."
    Her words were like salt on the raw sore of his sexual frustration. He had damn well felt passion—an alarming amount of it, in fact—in obvious contrast to her icy lack of it. It irritated him profoundly that he, who had set out to seduce her, had been the one to succumb to desire, while she stood there, cool and contemptuous.
    “I do not intend to marry you. I never did, even before your tasteless proposal," Miranda went on, feeling once again in control. It was frightening how easily she had almost lost that control. To think she had come so close to falling like a naive girl for this cad's false seduction! "I am not interested in an arranged marriage—although, of course, I can see the advantages of one."
    "Indeed." Devin folded his arms across his chest, regarding Miranda sourly.
    "Oh, yes, indeed. For you, of course, there is my money. For me, well...I would be able to introduce my sister Veronica into London society in the way that my stepmother wishes. That would please both Veronica and my stepmother, who are both quite dear to me. And your name, of course, is an old and respected one, despite the fact that you have tarnished it with your dissipated ways."
    "What!" His eyes widened, and his hands dropped to his sides, balling into fists. "How dare you?"
    Miranda looked back at him innocently. “I beg your pardon. Is that not true? It is what I have heard. But perhaps you have been wronged by the gossips. Have you not wasted all your fortune? Do you not keep loose company and spend your time in gambling hells and houses of ill repute?"
    He pressed his lips together tightly, a flush rising along his stark cheekbones.
    "Well?" Miranda prodded. "Is it a false rumor?"
    "You should not even know of such things, let alone speak of them," he snapped. "It's unseemly."
    "Unseemly for me to speak of them but not for you to do them? Really, Lord Ravenscar, I am not a fool, whatever you may think of those of us who live beyond the hallowed shores of England. Nor am I deaf. Did you not think that I would hear the rumors? Why, just tonight as I walked around the ball, I heard that you had shamed your father, wasted—"
    "Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about."
    "Oh, but I am afraid I do. Promiscuity, profligacy, drunkenness—these are the sorts of things that are always grist for the rumor mill. Everyone talks about them. I'm sure that none of